Day 1 post op

I just want to take a moment to tell everyone on these forums how amazed and proud I am of y'all. I woke up from surgery yesterday HURTING. After 2 c sections I thought I would handle it better but nooo. This surgery is rough. My perspective is a little better since I'm home now but I was really freaked out in the hospital...what did I do to myself? I made several laps walking the same day as surgery only to fall back into bed hurting and exhausted. Although I can definitely see improvement in how I feel since yesterday I'm still in shock and I'm thinking 2 weeks off work isn't gonna be enough. After reading so many stories of people going back to work and shopping after just a few days I thought I was gonna pop out of this like a daisy. Lol. But nooo. I'm gonna be slower to recover for sure.

I definitely recovered very slowly. I spent most of the first week post-op in bed and napped most of the time. I had an easier time in week two and did more walking, but I was still exhausted. I took naps after work pretty much every day for the first three months, maybe more!

I was napping for a long while afterwards as well.

I'm amazed at how much variation there is in how people feel after VSG. I suspect some of it has to do with the physical layout of your organs (how much poking around they have to do), whether or not they have to do other things like remove your gallbladder or fix a hernia, how attentive and skilled the pain management team is, and how your body reacts to anaesthesia and the stress of surgery. Sounds like you got unlucky with at least one of those factors. I'm so sorry, and I hope you're feeling a lot better today!

One strange thing was that I swear I could "feel" the hole inside where my stomach used to be. Not that it hurt, just that I could sense it. When I started researching surgery, I was surprised to learn how high up the stomach really is. Like a lot of people, I assumed the stomach was stomach was more in the belly, because that's where hunger, fullness, or nausea seemed to be located. But after surgery, I knew precisely where my stomach was! That keen awareness of it lasted about 8 or 9 months.

Even though my recovery went pretty smoothly, it did take a long time to get my strength back. I could handle grocery shopping after one week, and my desk job at one month post-op, but it was closer to 8 months before my energy levels were normal again. Of course, being 58 at the time may have been a factor, and the fact that I was sedentary before surgery.

People are all across the board on this, although most feel little to no pain. Pain or no pain, being really tired the first few weeks is very common, though. I napped A LOT the first week - and was pretty exhausted for probably the first month. It'll pass...

Hi there, I had VSG surgery on May 16, 2019 so I can relate. The worst thing for me was the gas pain coming out of surgery and as far as my stomach, It freaking hurts... I won't lie to you. I'm probably hurting a little more than I need to be, but it's because Dr. wants me to take liquid Tylenol and the only thing you can get in liquid is kids Tylenol and that stuff is worse than trying to drink Buckley's. So I'm trying to tough it out instead of gagging while drinking a mouthful of sickly sweet sugared Tylenol.

As far as work goes, you have to follow your body and what it's telling you. Don't overdo it and do as the doctor asks you to do. I have decided, as long is long as I keep recovering the way I am now, I'll be only taking the two weeks off for not going back to work. Week one back to work maybe a progressive return to work. Energy is a bit of a problem for me...

Karen